Writing my Author's Note while all hopped up on meds. 👌🏻 I see no downsides to this at all. #Writing #WritersOfCoSo

(And before @EdgeOErin asks, yes, I will deny all the saccharine nonsense in this post. It's the cold medication talking! I've been kidnapped! Aliens ate my brain but had to hurry home before they'd finished! 😅)

I saw the sweetest tattoo on my way back from getting more meds. The sheer *love* in someone's life, to want to scribe on one's arm forever (in Spanish): "If it be God's will that I am reborn as a child, I only ask of Him that He return as well my mother to be my mother."

What a special thing, to be loved and to love in turn so deeply.

We can somewhat control the love we put out--but it's a rare, precious thing to feel so much safety from the start.

Hug your loved ones.
Always let them know.

🙃 Another sick day where I'm trying to get work done in bursts between sneezing and wheezing fits. I can be upright for maybe half an hour at a time before the eyes water and the volleys come on. Bodies are the worst. Currently waiting for medication to kick in, and horizontally scheming for how to optimize my next burst of clarity. #Soon

👋 Morning CoSo!

I see that someone has boosted an old ask - which is very kind, but although I'm definitely still in the red from helping César's family in January and February, I am managing my debt load while trying to make more income.

There are, however, plenty in #CoSoMutualAid who more urgently need help keeping the lights on or undergoing major transitions. Please consider helping @Jene_Sais_Quoi & @Blue_Skyesr_here start over.

& CoSo could use funding too!
Lots of love to be shared. ❤️

Tonight, in the spirit of Learning New Skills This Year, I submitted my first crossword for newspaper consideration. Took me a while to complete a proper themed entry! But, a lot of fun, and I'm sure it'll get easier now that I've got one under my belt.

Now to bed so I can finish novel revisions for eBook & PDF ARCs early tomorrow morning. I've been sneezing all day, which hasn't been great for editorial focus. (My body is apparently allergic to being upright when unwell. 🙃) Hasta mañana, CoSo!

Morning CoSo!

Just a simple news brief today for #OnlySky, of different partnered use cases of GPT-4. The aim is to highlight that this technology *is* a tool, and needs to be treated centrally as such as its reach expands. Are there still challenges ahead? Definitely.

But I've got a longer feature in the works, to wrestle with how we seek out what is "true" in the secular world - so I'll do a deeper dive into the challenges of ML (the OTHER ML 😅) at that juncture.

#AI
https://onlysky.media/mclark/ready-or-not-gpt-4-launches-with-cross-platform-utility/

Evening tracks tonight come from Ane Brun's cover album, Portrayals. (Beyonce's original power ballad is too active for bedtime.) Sweet dreams, #CoSo. I'm disconnecting from other sites 'til month's end - but looking forward to writing & recovering here for the next few weeks. 💙

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/6FWG4hIzQTo

FedEx says I'll be receiving some absolute brilliance on Friday, care of the even more brilliant @thewebrecluse, who for some reason veto'd a giant poster of her lovely face in the background of future videos. 🙃❤️ Still, I can't wait. This week, my main lit job is to finish ARCs & promo materials for Children of Doro, & start a new story for submission ASAP. But if FedEx shows? I should also have better videos for folks on Saturday. (Better for my sanity & hopefully your viewing pleasure, too! 🤞)

Afternoon lovelies! 🤗

Just a little behind my time today, while trying to get the next novel ARCs finished for book promo this week. 🤞

Today's #Newsletter for #BetterWorldsTheory is a "lighter" meditation on the astonishment of survival, how it informs the stories we tell, and the stories we deem worth telling at all.

What would literature look like, if every day's survival were treated as the wonder it truly is?

https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-wonder-of-survival-and-its-stories

Here's a poem I keep coming back to, when I need a reminder that we live within so much contrivance. To exist at all is extraordinary.

Hope you're all being as kind to yourselves as possible, in the middle of so many worldly frays. 🫂

#Poetry #CoSoPoetry

Okay, I am usually a grinch about such things, but I will never not stan seeing two young'uns whose shy, careful body language around each other conveys both how much they care for each other and also how much this feeling between them is new enough terrain they're still working out how to get it just right. 💛

(But TELL NO ONE I have a soft and squishy side somewhere in this cranky meatsack, too. 😅 I have a reputation to maintain!)

And my favourite from the album, Ténéré Tàqqàl (what has become of the Ténéré)

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/boiiiVh52v4

No idea why, but this afternoon felt like a good time to put on some groovy nomadic rock. Tinariwen's Elwan album, in particular, which has some trippy desert-punk-SF videos to accompany your ride. 👌

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/H1YIgwPsX5Q

Morning, #CoSo! 😊 Who likes cheerful news? Well... maybe this one's not for you.

Today for #OnlySky, I tie together three recent bank crashes that speak not just to the precarity of crypto and the tech startup industry, but also the deeper and more human confidence games at stake.

I promise, it's not just a wash of numbers, and *should* help clarify what to make of three major players' different but related collapses this week.

Happy Saturday! Bury your gold! 💫 https://onlysky.media/mclark/three-bank-crashes-in-three-days/

Midnight, & novel formatting is coming along nicely. Not finished yet--I have to test footnotes for accessibility, & run a full proof before I split it into ebook & analog files--but getting there. Different writing tasks tomorrow. For now, sleep--to dream of electric sheep. 🐑🤖

#IndiePublishing #AmEditing